Polyamides (PA) have found broad application for technical uses. As the stiffness of the PA makes them inappropriate for many uses, they are often reinforced with glass fibers. Such glass fiber-reinforced polyamides are found widely in the upper housings of electrical hand tools such as percussion drills. The disadvantage of such glass fiber-reinforced polyamides is that they have reduced impact resistance in comparison to unreinforced PA types.
Due to this insufficient impact resistance, glass fiber-reinforced PA often fails to meet standard test requirements for electrical tools. Attempts have therefore been made to improve the impact resistance of glass fiber-reinforced polyamides by the addition of modifiers.
In known processes (EP-A No. 0021303 and EP-A No. 0027198), glass fibers, impact resistance modifiers and, optionally, dyes, are extruded with the
in the same channel. In this way, impact resistance modifiers, dyes or pigments can also be extruded with the PA in a first extrusion channel and then the glass fibers can be worked into this impact resistance-modified
in a second extrusion channel.
If dyes or pigments, e.g. TiO.sub.2, which have undesirable effects on glass fibers (see DE-A No. 2226932) are extruded into the PA by the process described above, the impact resistance is drastically reduced. Therefore, it has previously been impossible to color highly impact-resistant glass fiber-reinforced polyamides with essential dyes or pigments.